Unfortunately, he picked the wrong day to confront me.

“I suggest you walk the fuck away before I rip your puny arm off and bitch slap your ugly face with it.”

I want to wipe the arrogant smile off his lips when he leans in. “Last time I checked you were technically a faculty member, so I suggest you stay in your lane unless you want to lose this piece of shit job over assaulting a student.”

Jesus Christ. What a fucking pussy.

He’s too scared to approach me without a safety net because he knows I’ll beat the living shit out of him and make him regret the day he was born.

Edging away, he pops the collar of his shirt. “Like I was saying, stay away from my fiancée, chump.”

“Ex-fiancée,” I remind him. “Or did you not get the memo?”

He bristles before he recovers. “You mean the memo that she’s still wearing my ring.”

He’s got me there.

However, I’d rather die than let him know how much that guts me.

“Not for long,” I muse.

Taking a step back, Stone cackles like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. “Bianca’s a smart girl. Do you really think she’d give up everything we have to be with some murdering junkie whose biggest accomplishment in life is becoming a janitor?”

Pure wrath races through my veins and my hands are wrapped around his throat before I can stop myself.

He starts coughing and choking, but that only makes me tighten my grip. I want nothing more than to squeeze every drop of life out of him and get rid of this problem forever.

Closing the distance, I bring my lips to his ear because I want him to hear what I’m about to say loud and fucking clear.

“I might be a murdering junkie, but you’re nothing but a scared little boy whose balls still haven’t dropped.” I can tell I’m scaring the shit out of him because his eyes widen with fear. “And you have every right to be scared…because she doesn’t look at you the way she looks at me.”

She never will.

This weasel is just a pathetic, piss-poor understudy.

I’m the man she loved first.

“Oakley, stop,” someone who sounds a lot like Dylan shouts.

Next thing I know, she’s trying to wedge herself between us and pry us apart.

“Oakley, please,” she begs.

“I’m gonna have you arrested,” Stone wheezes when I release my grip. “Say goodbye to your freedom, asshole, because you just signed your ticket back to jail.”

Goddammit.

I flip him the bird. “Suck my dick, you pussy motherfucker.”

“Not so fast,” Dylan says when Stone brings his phone to his ear. “You’re not calling the police.”

“The fuck I’m not,” Stone argues.

I step toward him. “Do it, bitch. I don’t give a fuck. I’ll finish whooping that ass before the cops show up.”

It will suck to go back to jail, but I’m sure as shit not gonna let him think he’s got my balls in a vise.

I can see the panic in Dylan’s eyes as she places her hand on my chest. “He’s my family, Stone.”

Stone starts pressing buttons on his cell. “I don’t care.”

I seriously regret not popping his head off like the goddamn weed he is.

Dylan snatches his phone away. “If you do this, I’ll be upset…and you really don’t want to upset me. Because if you do? You’ll upset Jace. And we all know what happens when Jace gets upset.”

Yeah…he puts people in the hospital.

Like Stone’s piece of shit brother Tommy.

He seizes his phone from her hand. “Whatever.”

With that, he runs off like the little bitch boy he is.

Dylan turns her furious glare on me. “What the hell is wrong with you, Oak? Are you trying to go back to jail?”

“He started it.”

She cocks an eyebrow. “Seriously? What are you, five?”

“It’s the truth,” I growl. “I was minding my own business and he started with me.”

She rubs her forehead. “And somehow your hand ended up wrapped around his throat because…”

“He’s a motherfucking piece of shit pussy bitch baby.”

Exasperated, she throws up her hands. “Gee, that really clears things up.”

“I’m serious, Dylan. The douchebag can’t deal with the fact that Bianca doesn’t want to get married and called off the wedding, and he thinks starting with me will fix it.”

Dylan opens and closes her mouth like a fish. “Bianca called off the wedding?”

“Yeah. Last I heard anyway.”

She blows out a breath. “Wow. I mean, I definitely don’t think it’s a bad thing.” She wags a finger in my face. “But what is a bad thing is you fighting.”

“The fucker deserved it.”

“That may be true, but you have a rap sheet now and the last thing you need is to be on the cops’ radar again because they will haul you back to jail.” She puts her arm around my waist. “Come on, I’ll buy you lunch and we can talk.”

We start walking…until I recall what she said the other week. “Dylan?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you really think I have what it takes to be a songwriter?”

She smiles. “I really do, Oak.”

I mull this over for a hot minute.

Stone’s comment about me only amounting to a janitor shouldn’t bother me.

But it does.

All my life I’ve always done the bare minimum. Never branching out.

Never believing in myself.

Because I’ve been too afraid of screwing shit up to even try in the first place.

“Do you think you can give that Landon dude a call?”

Chapter 39

Bianca

My heels clack as I make my way up the staircase leading to his apartment.

Oakley’s obviously upset with me, but instead of talking to me about it…he’s avoiding me.

And I’ve had about enough of it.

Making a fist, I bang on his door so loud my hand hurts.

I don’t give a fuck that it’s early in the morning or that it’s his day off, I need him to talk to me now, dammit.

The door swings open after my seventh knock.

I have to remind myself to breathe when he answers it wearing nothing more than a pair of gray sweatpants.

He brings the spoon from the bowl of cereal he’s munching on to his mouth. “Hey—”

“You promised,” I yell. “You pinky promised you wouldn’t leave me, yet the first time I do something you don’t like, you get upset and abandon ship.” I stab the air with my finger. “Not fucking cool, Oakley Zelenka. I know me being with Stone is hard for you to swallow, but you don’t get to stand there and get butthurt over the decisions I make when you won’t even tell me what happened between us.”

He takes another bite of his cereal, studying me carefully as he chews. “You done yet?” I watch the muscles in his throat work as he swallows. “For your information, I was gonna ask if you wanted to chill today.”

I clench my hands. “Then why didn’t you?”